


In the Ever-Hungry Darkness

by plumedy



Category: Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Drama, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 07:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1770748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/pseuds/plumedy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>I know he would not hesitate even to counsel me to forget</i> him <i>if he thought it at all possible that I'd agree.</i></p><p>Fair warning: this gets really melodramatic really fast. Well, as melodramatic as Gothic hurt/comfort with supernatural elements tends to get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Ever-Hungry Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> that's a repost because I suddenly realized I posted the wrong version *shrugs* Though I confess at this point I can't tell which one is better.

It happened sometime after the Blaney case. I say ‘happened’; the Doctor is very insistent that we both of us must have suffered a horrific hallucination. He tells me to indulge no fears of the preternatural – to forget it like a bad dream. But he said the same about our work; I know he would not hesitate even to counsel me to forget _him_ if he thought it at all possible that I’d agree. I still hear his voice when recalling that day. ‘Drive these memories from your mind.’

I know it was not a dream nor a vision.

The road leading from Exeter to Chudleigh was silent but for an occasional long and melancholy rustle of the forest. The wind wandering among the aspens was cold – so cold, in fact, that I thought that the autumn must be coming to an end. Somehow it contributed to the profound feeling of hopelessness I felt gnawing at my heart. I was in a dark mood, and peculiarly enough, Bell, who was walking a few steps ahead, seemed to be just as unhappy. He shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his black overcoat, holding his cane under his arm; this way his limp must have been causing him considerable pain, especially in that damp weather, but he ignored it entirely.

“I’ve always wanted to ask you-” I said, hesitantly, “Doctor?”

Bell stopped and turned to me. The expression in his pale blue eyes was almost like a physical obstacle, and I stopped, too.

“Yes?” he said at last. “What is it?”

“About Heather Grace.”

Unmoving, he continued to contemplate me, but I saw his face soften.

“I don’t think you should,” he said. I shrugged and offered a nervous smile.

“There are things that cannot be made worse.”

“Oh, I believe you’ll find you are very much mistaken in this particular regard,” responded the Doctor, frowning. He came closer to me, put his gloved hand on my shoulder, and pushed me softly forward. We walked on. “All right, Doyle. I’ll answer any question of yours if I can.”

The darkness smelt with rotting wood. Of course I did pick a most unfortunate time and place for melancholy conversations, and the Doctor’s reluctance to touch this topic was all the more understandable now. But somehow I couldn’t help myself.

“What do you think of her character?” I asked him. “Do you think she was insane?”

“Insane!” He grimaced, as though tasting something sour. “That’s a rather peculiar way of putting it. Oh, no, she was in her right mind – insomuch as one can say that about a murderer. You know, Doyle, I find that people are quick to cry insanity when they encounter criminals who have unusual motives. I cannot fathom what it is that makes them think that a person who kills others for money and feels not a grain of remorse afterwards is saner and more humane than those who murder for the sake of higher passions. Shouldn’t it be the other way round?”

“It’s normal,” I said. “Murder for profit.”

“ _Common_ , yes. But if we don’t consider the truly desperate, killers of this kind are just as baffling as Miss Grace.” The Doctor tried for a dry lecturing tone and missed by a mile. “Was Chantrelle mad? Was Cunningham? Are all others, the dozens of them that are hanged every day in every corner of this blessed country? In many cases murder is simply a case of distorted perspective. When the suffering of a living human being is considered unimportant in comparison to something else – whatever this something is – all sorts of revolting things are bound to happen.”

With that, he whipped his cane from under his arm and finally condescended to use it for support. His lean face was pinched with pain.

“Now listen, Bell,” I said, concerned, “you mustn’t-“

“I’ll cede this point to you,” he breathed, halting and intertwining his fingers on the silver top. “Anything else you wished to know?”

I nodded at length.

“Do you think,” I began slowly, “that she actually was-“ but the words caught in my throat.

“-in love with you?” he finished, in a surprisingly gentle voice. “Or using you for her own purposes? I think that the answer to any such question is almost always ‘a bit of both’. And ultimately, it is of no importance.”

I nodded again, quite unable to continue. The Doctor narrowed his eyes.

“It doesn’t matter, Doyle,” he said. “It is important that you understand that.”

“I-“ I choked a little, “I understand. Thank you, Doctor.”

“Nonsense,” responded he, not unkindly.

That was when we heard a wail – a soft cry of lamentation, no louder than the rustle of the aspen leaves above our heads. Bell turned swiftly on his heels; a gust of cold wind very nearly carried his hat away, forcing him to grab it by the brim. He studied the sheer darkness between the pale branches hanging over the road.

“That sounded like a child’s voice,” he remarked. For a while we were silent, until at last the sound resumed. It was louder now, as if whoever was crying in the forest had walked closer to us. And I agreed with Bell: it must have been a child; a human being, at any rate, though the cries were strangely monotonous. But there was a raw, desperate edge to them that sent shivers down my spine.

The Doctor jumped off the road and dived into the thicket. I followed on his heels; he made his way in the darkness with an unexpected, catlike grace, identifying at once the source of the sound.

There was no light at all but for that of the sky, which reflected in the smooth silvery bark of the aspens like in a thousand dusty mirrors. The air was saturated with the poignant smell of damp leaves – I felt them squelching under my feet as I walked.

Suddenly Bell stopped dead. In front of us, stretched on the ground, lay a young girl in a white lace dress. She had long, thin legs and arms: no older than seventeen, a little disproportionate in a way children are. But I couldn’t tell for certain, because she lay on her stomach, her face pressed into the wet ground. Her dark curly hair fell onto her shoulders, and I could see that it was full of twigs and mud. The whole of her back under the mass of hair was stained dark; the short puffed sleeves of the dress were soaked through, too, as was the handkerchief she squeezed in her hand.

The Doctor gave an audible sigh.

“We are an extraordinarily unlucky pair,” he said, “are we not?”

In that moment we heard that long unsettling cry again. But this time, it was close to us – louder than any other sound in the forest, only a few feet away. I realized, suddenly, that it was coming from the body: that girl was _alive_ , and she was wailing softly, her face still pressed into the mud. And I saw the fingers of her hand curl and uncurl a little, grasping pointlessly at a tree root.

We both got on our knees. Bell took her carefully by a shoulder and turned her over.

I don’t remember the next moments very well; I only know that he grabbed my wrist and jerked me back with the force that was just short of enough to dislocate my hand. The girl sat up, with an effort, and seized a branch of the tree she’d been lying under. Her cheeks were waxen white, but with a strange warm tint, as if someone had added red wax to the white. And she was looking at us with a pair of green eyes.

Instinctively I moved towards her, but the Doctor held me tight.

“She lacks a heart,” he pointed out reasonably. “Stay where you are.”

Her ribcage was torn open. I could see the dark red pieces of her lungs, shining wetly in the glow of the aspens. But her heart wasn’t there: only a fragment of the vena cava remained, hanging over one of the ribs.

“And she-“ his voice suddenly shook in a most troubling way, and the grip of his fingers on my wrist steeled, “oh, God. _God help us._ ”

I squeezed his hand back. For her face, though impossibly young and devoid of any discernible expression, was that of Edith Bell; I knew it well enough to feel sick to my soul upon so much as looking at her.

She made a step towards us. It was a cold and awful presence, fear personified, and I felt my throat tighten as she got closer. I wanted to look away and I could not; I wanted to be still and to listen lest she should start uttering one of these horrid cries, but I could hardly hear anything beyond my own furiously pounding heart. This was not a benevolent spirit sent to console us. This was evil.

The Doctor let out a pained sound. I had hardly ever heard such naked grief in his voice – and momentarily it made me forget the creature in front of us, and I turned to him, sick with worry. It seemed that all life was drained from him. He stood with his back against a tree, his shoulders slumped, and his gaze was fixed only on the approaching figure. A deathly leaden hue was on his sharp cheekbones.

Again I looked at the creature.

“Leave him alone,” I blurted with unreserved hostility. When it did not comply, I took a step towards it; the sight of that cold and inhuman face was almost too much to bear, but I ignored it in my anger. That it dared hurt him so was intolerable.

Apparently my words surprised it. It stopped in its tracks, its expression searching, and raised a hand in a childish gesture of hesitation. It would have touched my chest but for something behind my back attracting its attention; and I felt a soft steady pressure on both of my shoulders.

I cast a glance sideways.

“Doctor?..” I breathed out.

He was effectively using me as a rifle bench rest. His hand with the revolver was unfaltering as always; I heard a loud click of the safety.

“Not a step forward,” he said, in an eerily low voice. His warm breath brushed against my neck. “Or I’ll shoot your head into pulp.”

It froze, its pale thin lips flinching in a grin that never quite reached its eyes. Astonishingly, it seemed troubled, more so than it had been by my outburst.

“I have no knowledge,” continued the Doctor, and his fingers on the trigger tightened, “of who or what you are, but, though you do seem to be doing fine without a heart, I imagine there is a good chance you’ll be considerably handicapped by having your eyes smashed into your brain.

“Now state whatever it is that you want with us – if, of course, you do want anything of essence – and be gone.”

The idea was a bit of a gamble, but the creature backed away, the white lace of its dress catching on the tree branches. I noticed that its small bare feet were badly scratched and that its blood was mixing with the dirt covering its ankles.

“You’ll never succeed,” it said, and the sound of its voice was like a cold hand squeezing my heart. I found it hard to breathe. “Whatever your efforts, the result will be the same. Nil. Nothingness. There will come many more like Heather.

“From this point on, there is no hope.”

“There has never been any,” countered the Doctor evenly. “Cases like the Grace family murder are not a new phenomenon. Unusual, certainly. New, by no means.”

“There will come many more like Cream,” it continued, and I felt the Doctor’s other hand squeeze my shoulder. “Like me.”

“Let them come,” he said. “There may be no hope, but we’ll manage.”

It stood in front of us, grinning. And after a while, he lowered the revolver, slowly. There was hardly any use of it now: between us and the creature, there floated in the air dozens of sparkling white flakes that looked strangely like snow. I felt a touch of cold on my cheeks; and something in me faltered in a subtle but awful way.

The wall of white thickened. They flew to the ground, swift, and melted without touching it, devoured by the putrid black mass of autumn leaves. It was beautiful, in a way: as if the very stars and the very moon were rotting, turned by rapid decay into myriads of delicate fragments.

We held hands. I was trembling, but the Doctor stood unwavering, his gaze fixed on something deep inside that queer snowfall.

“Snow,” I whispered, needlessly.

“In October?” asked the Doctor in a dubious tone. “Well. I suppose.”

Then we were silent. All I heard was his deep, regular breathing and the rustle of the flakes. Looking into that whiteness hurt my eyes, but I kept looking still – for fear, I suppose, that the creature should come back for us. I could make out nothing but an occasional gaping strip of darkness, like a thousand-headed Kerberos opening his hungry mouths – furious and yet powerless to reach his prey.

Somehow I knew that had Bell shot her, it would have eaten us alive, that ever-hungry night without a heart and with the face of a dead woman.

“Would you have shot her?” I asked, numbly.

“ _It_ ,” corrected his voice from the gloom. “Not if I could help it.

“Not unless it tried to harm you, at any rate,” he added after a lengthy pause.

At last there seemed to be more black around us than white. Those gleaming icy fragments thinned. The blizzard was subsiding. I let go of Bell and at once I felt my knees buckle; he caught me just in time to prevent me from falling to the ground, and I collapsed in his arms. I felt numb and cold and hollow, as if my own heart had been torn from my chest.

“Doyle,” he called. His fingers slid under my jaw, pressing against my carotid artery in a habitual, unconscious gesture. I made an effort to look at him. “Do you trust me?”

“Doctor,” I acknowledged, in a whisper, and closed my eyes.

“Now, don’t you do that,” he said insistently. “Come. We should get out of here. My Webley may be a good protection against ghosts, but it isn’t going to save either of us from freezing to death.”

I clung to his shoulder and steadied myself somewhat. He nodded, leant on his cane, and we dragged ourselves towards Chudleigh.

“Ghosts,” I repeated. “That is what you think it was?”

“I’ve no clue,” responded the Doctor, shrugging a little. “It was certainly… something.”

It was after a while of limping in the sheer darkness of that aspen forest that we came to a crossroads with the path to the village. Another fifteen minutes later we were sitting in a room of a local inn we had chosen as our temporary residence when we had first come to Chudleigh in connection with one rather muddy affair Bell had been looking into; I was slumped on a couch, my arms crossed on my chest for support. I felt positively faint.

The Doctor sat in an armchair, facing me, and I saw his gaze wander over my figure suspiciously, as though he were not sure I had made it to our destination in one piece.

Everyone was asleep but us. How much time had passed I had no idea; I suppose I was merely grateful we had not been, like the unfortunate heroes of certain English fairy tales, gone for more than a century.

He struck a match and lit the kerosene lamp that stood on the table between us.

Now that I could study his face properly, I saw that the Doctor looked awful. He was chalk white, and long shadows stretched under his eyes and along his temples. His silvery curls, damp from the rain, were dishevelled in a most extraordinary fashion, giving his appearance a wild air. And yet his hands holding the match were steady, and he gazed at me intently, his head tilted a little.

“I daren’t quite ask if you are all right,” he remarked, the tiniest hint of humour in his voice.

“If I look just as terrible as you do, you may safely assume not,” answered I to that, and attempted a smile.

But I couldn’t keep the façade. I felt my very soul crumble at the memory of that bloodied, mutilated ribcage and the green eyes in which I had discerned with sickening certainty a hint of fiery red. And I fear I wept – as much as I would have liked to spare myself that humiliation, there was no way I could remain impassive now that we were safe and sound and all I could do was remember. I wept for myself, and I wept for him: for the grief I had heard in his voice when he saw her face. And for the certainty with which he had said _not unless it tried to hurt you_.

Though the Doctor must have had considerable experience with fretted and anguished patients of his, my reaction seemed to trouble him inexpressibly.

“Don’t, please don’t,” he said, catching both my hands in his. “It is not-“

But he seemed to be unable to say what exactly it was “not”.

“I’m so sorry,” I could only manage. At once I was consumed with guilt for the fact that he should have to console me as if I were a mere child. And, indeed, that he should do so at all when the image of that phantom must have been so vivid in his own memory.

“No, that is not what I meant,” the Doctor answered. For a long moment he sat like this; then he rose rather abruptly and left, only to come back with a blanket, which he then proceeded to wrap around my shoulders. It was a welcome change after the bone-eating cold of that rainy night.

“I’ll be honest with you, lad,” he said quietly. “I know neither what it was nor whether it was real.”

Then he resumed his place at my side and was silent again, for a while. Only the feverish warmth of his body reassured me that he was there at all.

“Do look at me,” he said with some hesitation. This was a direct request and of course I complied; and it hit me again how unwell he appeared, his eyes darkened with sorrow. He had gone through the unthinkable, had done what no other man could do, helped those whom it was in his power to help, and borne the burden of seeing those he could not save die. The one sweet, light memory he had had been mocked and turned into a nightmare. All the anguish in the world, it seemed, was behind him. And yet his first instinct was to see to it that I am safe and that I do not suffer.

"I would be happy to tell you it is going to be fine," he whispered. "If only I could."

"I don't need that," I whispered back. "I'd rather you be fine, Doctor."

I felt the Doctor’s delicate fingers against my cheekbone. He was wiping my tears away, in such a genuine gesture that I could not help a painful surge of love I experienced.

What was proper to say in these circumstances I had no idea, but I caught his hand and kissed his knuckles - which was a childish and absurd thing to do, I imagine. He flinched at this, his face flushing.

"Doyle," he began, and promptly choked on his own words. Abandoning any attempt to explain himself, he gathered me in his arms, and we remained like that for some time, holding onto each other. There was a strange sense of urgency about it, as if this way I could know for certain that no one would harm him. Nor me.

“Listen,” Bell said at last, and his voice took on a familiar firmness, “there’s one important thing I must tell you. I would strongly advise you against succumbing to any fears of the supernatural. Even if this experience was genuine, it could only be inspired by the vile and never otherwise; and, as long as you stay brave and honest, it can have no power over your soul.”

I moved closer to him. All seemed to blur before my eyes; it was a rather queer feeling: in part it must've been exhaustion, those silent flames of gold and blue I saw burning steadily in the darkness.

“You _are_ brave and honest, Doyle,” I heard the Doctor’s deep, even voice.


End file.
